Ghana in 2000

Chairman of the Provisional National Defense Council and President Jerry John Rawlings

Politics in Ghana during 2000 were dominated by campaigning for December’s presidential and parliamentary elections. Pres. Jerry Rawlings was constitutionally prohibited from running for reelection, and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) party nominated Vice Pres. John Evans Atta Mills. The leading challenger was the New Patriotic Party (NPP), led by John Kufuor. Another opposition party, the National Reform Party, broke away from the NDC and nominated former Rawlings associate Augustus Obuadum Tanoh for president. Opposition candidates charged the NDC government with rampant corruption and economic mismanagement. In the parliamentary elections held on December 7, the NPP captured 98 of the 200 seats, compared with 93 for the NDC. In the presidential race, contested the same day, neither candidate was able to score an outright victory; Kufuor won 48.4% of the vote, and Mills garnered 44.8%. With neither candidate receiving the required 50% of the vote, a runoff was scheduled for December 28. In the event, Kufuor scored an upset victory over Mills, this time commanding 57% of the vote, compared with 43% for Mills. On December 29 Mills conceded, and offered his cooperation in the transition to a new government. It was the first such peaceful handover of power by elected officials since independence in 1957.Voter turnout was high—about 85% of the 10.7 million registered voters went to the polls.

Economic news was dominated by the plunge in the value of the cedi. The Ghanaian currency traded at 3,500 to U.S. $1 in January but had fallen to 6,700 to the dollar by September. The government blamed its economic woes on declining world prices for cocoa and gold, which together accounted for approximately 70% of Ghana’s export earnings.

Ghana continued to play a leading role in the drive for West African integration. Meeting in Accra in April, the leaders of Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone or their representatives pledged to work toward a currency union by 2003. Ghana and Nigeria pursued an even faster track toward integration, announcing their intention to establish a free-trade zone.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.